


angels at war

by Wildehack (Tyleet)



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Blood, F/M, Medical Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 21:09:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2482544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/pseuds/Wildehack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't think about myself very much. I think about what I have to do."</p>
            </blockquote>





	angels at war

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was "Kili/Tauriel, the WW II AU." This is what I got!
> 
> Please do not copy or repost my work on any other site, even if it is credited under my name. I do not give permission to have my work hosted on any site except AO3.

Tauriel met him on the field, driving the ambulance as close as she could, shouting orders to the attendant. Normally Legolas, her rescue worker, brought them in—but he was in hospital with a broken wrist as of this morning. She ran out herself—he was collapsed in the open, both hands pressed to his leg, young face white with pain. She had to carry him almost all the way back, and it was a good thing he was both conscious and slight, or they might not have made it. He wasn’t speaking at that point, but she remembered his face, even through the usual panic—his clenched jaw, his eyes fixed on her.   
  
She visited him in the hospital, after the doctors had taken care of him and all that was really left was to rest and see if he healed. He remembered her, even though he’d been sick with pain. He had a bright grin, a joke for everything. He showed her the smooth little river stone his mother gave him that he always kept in his pocket, supposedly protection from harm. “It can’t have worked all that well,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Since you’re here.” He smiled. “I think it’s working fine.” It was warm in her hands. She went back to visit him whenever she could, after that—until one day he wasn’t there. She and Legolas were transferred out a month later, and she figured she’d never see him again. 

 —Only she did, six months later. She was walking through an understaffed ward in a makeshift hospital, deciding who most needed her help, and there he was, moaning with fever. She called the doctor back in, ruthlessly crushing her unexpected panic. He was so feverish he did not recognize her, but clutched at her hand regardless, almost breaking her control. “She walks in starlight,” he told her through gasps of pain, and she murmured mindless reassurances, preparing a shot of penicillin. “Do you think she could have loved me?” he asked the empty air. “Go to sleep,” Tauriel told him, and he sighed like a child. “Close your eyes,” she instructed, and he did. She sat at his side long after she should have gone to sleep herself, shaken.   
  
"We’ve got to stop meeting like this," he told her when he came back to himself, after a few more days of fever. He was grinning again, but his eyes were serious. "How about when all this blows over, you let me take you out dancing instead?" In two weeks she would be transferred again, and she’d lose track of him. Maybe next time she wouldn’t be there to save his life, or she wouldn’t be there in time. "Sure thing, soldier," she told him, and she meant it to be a joke, some idle flirtation, except that he was still looking at her like she hung the stars. Like Tauriel and her chapped hands and red-stained uniform belonged in another world. "When this all blows over."   
  
He asked if he could write her when she left, and she told him yes. She got three letters, wrote him two in return, and without meaning to she looked for him among the wounded, among the dead, her steady heart pounding against her ribs.  _I’m very much afraid I love you_ , he wrote.  _Feel free to ignore that, if you like._  
  
She found him in the field, his uniform sodden with blood, his eyes black and wide. Legolas shouted at her to drive, he had him, damn her. She drove, and when she got them back to safety she threw up in the dirt before she could manage anything else. “The doctors have him,” Legolas said, catching her around the shoulders, but his hands were red with Kili’s blood. “You have to wait.” He hesitated, and then pressed something small into her hands, wrapped in his own handkerchief. “He said this was for you.”   
  
She took the handkerchief, and the small river stone shook out into her palm. 


End file.
